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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

You're not being put in jail for 20 years[1] for using a VPN (eg. for torrenting). You're being put in jail for 20 years because you violated other provisions of the law and tried to evade using VPNs. It's not any different than you getting put in jail for 20 years for violating some anti-terror legislation, and using VPNs to pull that off.

[1] realistically not, given federal sentencing guidelines, see: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

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Having 20 year sentence on the books for something that isn't rape or murder is barbaric in my opinion.

Did you miss the footnote?

Nope. Didn't even click it.

Prosecutors use the arduous court system to force their victims to accept pleas.

That might be true, but it still doesn't change the fact that you're unlikely to get 20 years for accessing tiktok over VPN. You might get some sort of prison sentence (or none, too lazy to look up the exact guidelines), but saying 20 years is pure hyperbole.

> saying 20 years is pure hyperbole

The law says "up to 20 years". Therefore, american citizens can be imprisoned for 20 years over this bullshit. Don't minimize it.

> unlikely to get 20 years ...

20 years for being a teenager and watching shitty vlogs and memes? "unlikely" doesn't cut it, anything less than "impossible" should be unacceptable.

> You might get some sort of prison

Again: WHAT? go to prison for watching shitty vlogs and memes? You guys are really reaching Saudi Arabia levels with this law, how can you be so complacent with that?

The footnote is irrelevant, the guidance says you shouldn't, but the law says you legally can.

The latter is enforceable, the former is just a recommendation

I can already see the copyright monopolists lobbying the government to classify infringement as intellectual terrorism or something.

Again, the problem there wouldn't be that the law is banning VPNs, it's having harsh punishment for copyright infringement. That's a perfectly serviceable argument. Don't say they're putting people in jail for using VPNs, that would just be dishonest.

The same applies for the tiktok law. Go out and argue how the government is banning you from using tiktok under threat of prison sentence or whatever. Don't make the unsupported argument that the proposed law is going to punish you for using VPNs for unrelated reasons (eg. torrenting).

>violating some anti-terror legislation

Like the Patriot act?

That part of the argument can easily be substituted with something less controversial, like sanctions or wire fraud laws.

>wire fraud laws

The famously overbroad laws that get abused by prosecutors in cases like Aaron Schwartz facing 35 years for downloading files.

Rip aaron

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